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Healing Arts — Metroland

“I was assaulted and had a stroke. Knitting brought back my affected side. I can not dance anymore, but my work can.” This is from the artist statement of Lorna Ritz from Amherst, Mass. Words like hers accompany each of the 55 works that line the walls of a large exhibition space at the Fenimore Gallery at Schenectady’s Proctors.

All of the pieces in the room were created by 32 artists from all over the world with various disabilities, curated from more than 600 entries. Some artists have suffered spinal injuries, and some have lost fine motor skills to arthritis. Some have even lost their ability to see, like Kurt Weston, a legally blind photographer from California whose large black-and-white self-portraits haunt one of the rear walls of the space.